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Dan Bricklin’s Next

[via Anil Dash] Dan Bricklin has quit Interland (which he joined when his company, Trellix, was acquired). Bricklin is the quintessential serial entrepreneur, right from his VisiCalc days. So, it will be good to see what he is going to do next.

I am going back full-time to Software Garden, the tiny company that I founded in 1985. I plan to do consulting (for Interland and other companies) to bring in revenue, as well as product development and sales (for Software Garden). I have no specific product that I am set upon creating. I just want to spend a lot of time programming and then we’ll see what happens. I love programming and hands-on product development and this change gives me the opportunity to do a lot more of it. With respect to consulting, it gives me an opportunity to learn about new business areas and perhaps new technologies, and the money will take some of the “ship now” pressure off of Software Garden.

I continue to believe in the importance of the direction we have been going in our group at Interland. From what I’ve seen, a large number of small business owners need and want long-term professional help in taking advantage of the Internet. They need both consulting and actual execution coupled with the ability and training to do any or all of the execution themselves with easy to use tools. I’ve written this up in a previous essay (“Interland’s Platinum ‘Build A Web Site With You’ as a solution to a techie’s problem“) and continue to see its value. Despite this belief, though, that is not my journey. Honing this “Do It With You” form of delivery is quite different from the pre-packaged software world where I’ve spent most of my life. I am much more interested in technical product development and miss being immersed in it personally.

I am also interested in understanding how a small software company can make money in today’s world. The old business models of the early Software Garden days are from a different era. Today we have an even more fertile field for innovation. There is still evolution in how best to afford to produce each of the different types of software we need. Once I have some new products to distribute, I can experiment and learn myself.

One of the reasons I am interested in what Dan Bricklin does next is because of an interest I share with him – how can technology benefit SMEs.